My Top “Adulting” Fails…

Remember when you were living with your parents, going to school, and maybe had your part-time job after? You’d come home, dinner would be ready or food would be in the fridge, you wouldn’t have to worry about groceries, rent, bills etc.. You just went to school, did your HW, chores, went to work for a few hours and then hung out with friends in between. But there comes a time where we want more independence, we want to live on our own and do whatever we want. Moving out of your parents house means, more privacy, more independence, and a sense of freedom.

Living on your own is great, but this also means everything and I mean everything is your responsibility! Enter “Adulting”, the term we use when we are on our own and trying to deal with all the daily responsibilities that come with it. I’ve been living on my own for quite sometime now, and I still have adulting fails frequently. So these are my top adulting fails and what I try to do to fix them.

Not paying attention to your finances

This is probably my top fail. Falling behind or forgetting to monitor my finances is a common problem. This includes forgetting to pay utility bills, credit cards, overspending and not following a budget. It’s so easy to overspend when everything is just a swipe or a click away! In order to help myself here I use an app called Mint that lets me see my spending for all my accounts in one place. It even has bill reminders to let me know when either an auto withdrawal will take place or when a bill is due. Mint is great because it creates monthly budgets for categories based on your current spending, and this can be adjusted as desired. It also yells at you when you are going over your monthly budget for a spending category. Let’s just say, I get yelled at a lot…. I could go on and on about this topic, but I won’t for now

2. Not properly managing your time

Hmmm I want to watch these YouTube videos but I should be making my lunch/dinner for the next few days, aah it’s just a 15 min video… oh, the next video looks interesting too…. before you know it an hour has gone by. Losing track of time is so easy, there are so many distractions, you jump on FB on your phone; start browsing through your feed, check Instagram, then you look at snap chat, start playing with filters and snap a few friends… before you know it an hour has gone by and you haven’t even started doing your laundry…. I try to set myself a schedule of house chores on the weekends from a certain time, study on weekdays at least an hour, do my hw at work during lunch, etc..

Honestly, i’m still trying to work on this one, it’s more about will power and just not letting yourself get distracted when you know you need to be doing other things.

3. Leaving things to do for later

Procrastination is the enemy! I am a massive procrastinator ever since I can remember, I always leave things to do for later. I remember having weeks to do a project and then staying up late the night before it’s due to finish it because I had barely worked on it. It’s a terrible affliction that plagues many of us… What I try to do here is when I need to do something important like replace the battery in the smoke detector, ….. oh that thing was beeping I just took the battery out to make it stop, I’ll replace them later. Later turns into 3 months from now, or maybe never…. This is actually an important thing you should have working and so easily over looked. So I just told myself, replace them right now. No batteries? Well put it on the list and buy them when you go out later today. Now… placing the smoke detector back in its ceiling holder is a different story…. but at least its working.

4. Not prioritizing

This one goes along with 2 and 3. Having an idea of what is most important to get done will make things so much easier. I make a check list of the more urgent stuff I need to do. I use my phone’s task list that can give reminders, but a notepad works too, just make sure you actually refer to it and check things off! It’s so satisfying to check things off a list that have been sitting there for a while!

5. Letting the stress get to you

Sometimes I just feel it’s all too much for me, I work full time, but I also want to do other things to learn more about my field, I like taking courses and studying to expand my knowledge. I want to make YouTube videos and work on my blog. But I also need to take care of my household chores, and I want to have some sort of a social life as well as time for myself to relax. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed and I just don’t want to do any of it. It’s important not to let the stress get to you, sometimes we all just need a moment. The best thing for me to do here to motivate myself is just take is slow, I take a moment to myself to relax and do what I want maybe I complain a little to friends and just vent >.<, watch some YouTube and tv on the couch, and then either I do my daily exercise or I leave the house and do errands I need to get done outside first. I don’t know why but this sort of kicks me to get going, I guess because i’m already out and about and get some motivation.

So this doesn’t always work, sometimes there are weekends that i’m SO tired from the week, I just want to relax and this is ok, a long as it’s not ALL the time. I get the more important things done (like some light cleaning, laundry and bills) and i’ll take a few hours or the rest of the day to myself and to do what I want. Usually after taking a short moment to rest I’ll have some desire to do something else around the house.

I am guilty of all of these and I frequently try to fix it. I also live in a pretty old three story house, so some of the things I deal with, a lot of people who live in apartments with roommates or rooms wouldn’t come across, or not at such a scale. It’s my choice to live in a house, so I guess i’m sort of asking for it, I love my space and I have the opportunity to do what I like with the house while living in it. So these are my top adulting struggles what are some of yours? What do you do when you need to relax a little?